Page 64 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
I sit on the metal steps, one flight down, and put my head between my knees, forcing my system to reboot.
Inhale: 4 seconds. Hold: 4 seconds. Exhale: 4 seconds.
The door above me opens.
I hear the click of heels on metal.
I look up.
Tessa is standing on the landing. The backless dress exposes her shoulder blades, sharp and delicate like wings. She is holding two glasses of water.
“I figured you needed more hydration than scotch,” she says softly.
She walks down the steps and sits next to me. Not too close. She leaves a gap between us. Professional distance.
She hands me a glass.
“Thank you.” My voice is steady again. The static in my head has cleared, replaced by the hum of awareness I feel whenever she is near.
“Greg Miller is a shark,” she says, taking a sip of her water. “But I distracted him with data visualization. Journalists love graphs.”
“You handled him efficiently.”
“I handled him because he was cornering you,” she says. She turns to look at me. “You looked like you were about to glitch. That is the word, right?”
“I don’t glitch,” I say defensively. “I was… overstimulated.”
“Same thing.” She smiles, but it’s a sad smile. “You hate this, don’t you? The parties. The noise.”
“It’s necessary. Marketing drives adoption. Adoption drives data. Data drives the product.”
“See?” She shakes her head. “You’re doing it again. Reducing the room to code.”
“Everything is a formula, Tessa.”
“Am I?”
The question hangs in the cool air.
I look at her. The moonlight filtering through the grate casts shadows across her face.
“You are a complex variable,” I admit. “I’m still trying to solve you.”
“Good luck,” she whispers. “I don’t think I have a solution. I think I’m just a mess.”
“You aren’t a mess. You are…” I search for the word. “Vibrant. You saved me up there. You saw I was in distress and you intervened. Why?”
“Because that’s my job.”
“No. Your job is to manage the brand. Your job is not to protect the CTO from bad questions.”
“Maybe I just care about you,” she says softly.
My lungs lock. Care is a dangerous variable.
“You shouldn’t,” I say. “I’m not the brother you should care about. Owen is the one who makes you laugh. Ethan is the one who makes you… intense. I am just the one who watches.”
“You see me,” she says. “You told me that. In the car.”
